'Reporting Live' interview: Dhruv Tripathi on sand mafias and the human cost of truth

The sand that goes into building our cities comes with a history that rarely makes it into public view. Its extraction can sustain an illicit trade, with consequences for those who attempt to expose it. In Reporting Live, filmmaker Dhruv Tripathi takes this little-examined industry as the starting point for a thriller about two journalists whose investigation brings them face to face with the risks of pursuing a story.

The film follows reporter Sandhya (Parineeti Chopra) and video journalist Vinod (Deven Bhojani) as they investigate an illegal sand-mining racket, with Adil Hussain, Amol Palekar and Shekhar Suman among the cast. But the idea came from a conversation in 2019, when Dhruv's co-writer Mihir Jadhav told him about the existence of the sand mafia.

The human cost of truth

“It actually started out as a joke,” Dhruv recalls. “I was in disbelief. Sand seemed like such an ordinary thing. I went home that night and ended up staying awake researching it. The scale of illegal sand mining was astonishing, especially when you realise how much of the world around us is built from this seemingly ordinary material,” he shares.

As Dhruv researched the subject, he came across reports of journalists, activists and government officials being threatened, assaulted and killed while trying to expose illegal sand mining. What had begun as an improbable premise took on a more serious turn. “These were people simply trying to bring the truth out, and some of them had paid for it with their lives. We felt a responsibility towards the world we were depicting,” Dhruv says.

Dhruv wanted Sandhya and Vinod to embody the ordinary people who continue to pursue difficult stories despite the personal risks involved, rather than cast them as extraordinary heroes. “There are still people trying to uphold the sanctity of journalism and fighting against all odds to bring the truth to us,” he notes.

Dhruv began making short films at 15, using his father's camera and persuading friends to act in them, before studying for an MA in Filmmaking at the London Film School. His earlier directorial works include 10x10ft and Intezaar. With Reporting Live, he has brought a story rooted in an Indian reality to a global streaming audience.

“A story doesn’t necessarily have to become less specific in order to become universal,” he observes.

Dhruv is currently developing a couple of projects in genres different from Reporting Live, with no intention of confining himself to a single kind of story. “For me, the story has to first connect with me emotionally, and then I can find the best cinematic language to tell that story,” he concludes.

Reporting Live is currently streaming on Netflix.

Email: anoushkakundu@newindianexpress.com

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